Spicing up your summer travels

Bill Daley, Tribune Newspapers

MIDDLETON, Wis. – National Mustard Day is Aug. 6, and thousands of people will show up in this cute city to celebrate all things mustard. Everyone from fanatical mustard freaks to fun-loving families looking for something unusual to do will show up. So should you, if you happen to be anywhere in south-central Wisconsin near Madison, the state capital.

The festival is billed as the "world's largest condiment party." There will be mustard tastings, mustard-themed games, kids activities, live music and special treats, such as a mustard custard from Culver's restaurants festooned with salted caramel ribbons. The action takes place in a picturesque downtown where locals mix with visitors and mustard nobility such as the "duchesse" of mustard, a retired schoolteacher named Vi Bergum, who sports a tray-size hat topped with mustard bottles. Last year, some 6,000 people turned out and the festival raised more than $3,500 for charity.

But Middleton is worth a visit any time of year for mustard lovers because it is the home of the National Mustard Museum, sponsor of National Mustard Day. This one-of-a-kind museum celebrates mustard with such lively abandon that it's easy to forget visitors can digest quite a lot on the history and cultivation of mustard and its myriad uses. It is a place where no one need leave empty-handed; hundreds of mustard brands are for sale here, along with mustard-themed T-shirts, gifts and toys.

"We are a serious museum," declared Barry M. Levenson, the museum's curator and CMO (chief mustard officer) in a recent press release. "We just happen to take a fun approach to it."

Indeed. You can have a great time here. This museum is not lacking in sass, which is appropriate for a space devoted to such an assertive condiment as mustard. A bust of Michelangelo's David sports a mustard "mustache" like the folks in those milk commercials. A colorful wall display of mustard jars touts the "first 27 virtues" of the spice. A Lichtenstein-esque pop-art painting shows a tearful woman holding a yellow squeeze bottle.

"Oh Barry….," she says. "We're out of mustard!"

All the attitude is great fun. It also gets you thinking. Mustard, you realize, isn't just a yellow lick on a hot dog. Look around at the often whimsical dispensers, the colorful old mustard jars, the samples from every corner of the globe and suddenly it becomes clear: Mustard is a way of life.

That's certainly been true for Levenson. He is a onetime assistant attorney general for Wisconsin who successfully argued a case (Griffin v. Wisconsin, 1987) before the U.S. Supreme Court armed with a tiny bottle of mustard in his pocket. He spotted the bottle on a room service tray as he left his hotel room for the court, realized it was a brand he hadn't seen before, and he palmed it for his collection. He had begun collecting mustards a few months earlier after the Boston Red Sox lost the 1986 World Series. A devout Red Sox fan, he wandered over to an all-night grocery, looking to assuage his despair.

"I was passing the mustard aisle when a voice in my head said, 'If you collect us, they will come,'" he recalled.

And they did start coming once Levenson quit the attorney general's office and opened his mustard museum to the public in 1992. Over the years, Levenson's collection grew from a dozen jars to more than 5,354 mustards from 79 countries. The museum, begun in nearby Mount Horeb, moved to Middleton in 2009. In January, the museum was incorporated as a nonprofit entity, with the existing for-profit corporation continuing to sell mustards, souvenirs and books in the museum gift shop and online.

And then, of course, there's National Mustard Day. "This is one of the few Wisconsin events without a beer tent," Levenson said. "Kids love the games, the adults taste the mustard.

"It's hard to get kids to eat mustard in this country because it's spicy," he mused, tongue firmly in cheek. "We've gotten kids to eat mild and sweet things. That's why ketchup is the leading cause of childhood stupidity in the United States."

If you go

National Mustard Day, 10 a.m.- 4 p.m. Aug. 6

National Mustard Museum, 7477 Hubbard Ave., Middleton, Wis., open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. The museum is in Middleton, about 7.5 miles to the west of downtown Madison. The town is located on the shores of Lake Mendota. 800-438-6878, mustardmuseum.com

Visit Middleton for a chance to ogle historic houses, take a sip or two at the well-respected Capital Brewery, stroll the 550-acre Pheasant Branch Conservancy nature preserve or learn a bit about the city at the old train depot-turned-museum. For more information: 800-688-5694, visitmiddleton.com.